Piero Gilardi , born in Turin in 1942, is one of the most internationally known Italian artists among those of his generation, already able in 1965, just twenty-three, to overturn the established rules of painting and sculpture by providing a mixture of so-called Nature-Carpets : fragments of natural environments reproduced by carving an innovative material and never before used in art such as polyurethane foam, worked through the use of scissors and cutters in search of absolute realism in shapes as - through painting - in chromatisms.

Poised between a fruition that is no longer just visual but also practical and playful, combined with a never concealed intent to denounce the growing industrialization and the consequent alteration of natural environments, Gilardi's work immediately won wide acclaim through personal exhibitions. held in Turin, Paris, Milan, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne and New York, capable of projecting the artist into the international limelight, while at the same time he went alongside his practical activity with the theoretical elaboration of new trends such as Arte Povera, Land art and Antiform art, providing a fundamental theoretical contribution in the realization of the first international exhibitions of new artistic expressions such as Op Losse Schroeven at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle in Bern.

Throughout the seventies Gilardi was artistically involved in the formations of the so-called "new left" extra-parliamentary , embracing a collective and spontaneous creativity and operating in various social and cultural spheres, from Nicaragua to Kenya, up to the territories of the Native Americans. The full return to artistic production will take place in 1980, while starting from 1985 the new technologies will quickly lead him to the creation of interactive multimedia installations. The Center Georges Pompidou in Paris recently acquired two of his historic works for its collection, while in May Gilardi is honored with a large anthological exhibition at the prestigious Magazzino Italian Art Foundation in New York. The event imagined for Livorno, the artist's only Italian date in this 2022, traces the entire half-century of his activity through over sixty carefully selected works, placing the city as the home of one of the most important contemporary art exhibitions - not only at the level national - among those of the current year.